This interdiciplinary studio consists of Architecture and Landscape Architecture students from the College of Design at Iowa State University, and students from Prof. Miriam Zach's IDH 3931 Music and Health Honors course at the University of Florida.
There are three projects. The first two are short one-week introductory projects; the third one lasts for the remainder of the semester. For Project 1 students are asked to design a Garden for the Blind on the site south of Hume Hall on the University of Florida campus. For Project 2 students will design a Music Room for a Hearing Impaired Person in a condominium on Crescent Beach, south of St. Augustine. The third project is the design of a Music and Architecture Research Institute (M.A.R.I.) to be located on three barges that will travel between Davenport, Iowa, and Cedar Key, Florida. For more detailed information please click on the buttons in the left column or read the synopses of the projects below.
Students from Iowa State and the University of Florida collaborate on the Garden for the Blind design and the Music and Architecture Research Institute. Iowa State students will travel to Florida between February 16 and 20 to visit the University of Florida, St. Augustine, and Cedar Key. There will also be two official meetings to discuss the Garden for the Blind design, and to exchange ideas regarding the intersection of music and architecture.
| Project 1: Garden for the Blind Inspired by a Parisian restaurant for the blind (see http://www.danslenoir.fr/), and several designs for gardens for the blind in the United States and Germany (San Antonio, Raleigh, and Bonn), we proposed the following programme, to be sited south of Hume Hall on the University of Florida campus. |
Project 2: Music Room for Hearing Impaired Person In this case the inspiration came from the German movie Beyond Silence. It's a story about a hearing women (who wants to study music) growing up with deaf parents, and the resulting tensions, misunderstandings, and unmet expectations that structure that relationship. For the project students were asked to consider the sensory realm of air pressure variations (sound). See the programme here. |
| Fieldtrip to Florida Between February 16 and 20 students from ARCH 404/603 took a fieldtrip to Gainesville, Florida to visit with University of Florida students regarding the Garden for the Blind designs, and to explore research topics that might be studied in the Music and Architecture Research Institute (next panel, or check Project 3 for the programme). We also visited our studio site in Cedar Key (see photos here), took a boat trip to Seahorse Key (the UF Marine Biology Research Lab), and spend one day in St. Augustine (touring St. George Street, and climbing 14 storeys of stairs to the old St. Augustine lighthouse). |
Music and Architecture Research Institute (M.A.R.I.) M.A.R.I. developed out of the realization that there has been relatively little research into the intersection of music and architecture. We decided to use Paul Valery's literary work, and recent studies on music and architecture to frame an architectural programme that would accommodate researchers, musicians, and designers in a flexible, interconnected, and movable space. See the programme here. |